PHP Javascript? Do something when user closes page or browser [duplicate]

Answer 1

You can use window.onunload to fire an AJAX call when the user leaves the page/closes the tab.

window.onunload = function(){
  // AJAX call to mark user "offline"
}

EDIT: I suggest setting a variable when clicking on links, so that this only runs when the user leaves the page.

Using jQuery, it can be done like this:

$('a').click(function(){ // Run for all links
  $('body').data('linkClicked', true); // Set global variable
});

$(window).unload(function(){ // jQuery version of window.onunload
   if(!$('body').data('linkClicked')){ // Check global variable
      $.ajax({
        url: 'url',
        data: {some: data},
        async: false // this locks the browser, but it may be needed to make
                     // sure the ajax call runs before the tab is closed
      });
   }
});

Answer 2

I would use jQuery to perform this task.. something like this and using the window.onunload as mentioned above:

$.ajax({
  type: 'POST',
  url: url,
  data: data,
  success: success,
  dataType: dataType
});

Answer 3

The only way you can do something when the page is closed or navigated away from is to attach an event handler to the unload event, as Rocket suggests. However, you shouldn't rely on this event to trigger, as a lot of things may prevent it. The browser may stop it on order to focus it's resources on other tasks, the user may loose it's connection, the browser may be terminated, etc.

The most reliable way to keep track of users and session is to have them send keepAlive messages to the server at a given interval. Then you'll know that the user left sometime between a given timestamp and the interval of the keepAlive message.

On the server, you can then traverse the sessions which has not been kept alive for a while and perform any operation you need.

However, this approach won't be necessary if you only need to create some cool "logging off"-effect.